This post came out of the Irrational Fitness archives, having first been published on May 10, 2010.  It and a number of other posts seemed worth salvaging from the archives, so here it is.

This is finally the long awaited for post on how to start attacking pain in your shoulders, and improve the overall range of motion. This is a compilation of a new video on how to do manual work on your Subscap, as well as the older video that came out last month on how to free up your scapula and get is moving properly again. This time around the article should be really good, as I am now writing it for the second time as I was foolish enough not to make a copy of the last draft that I wrote for this. Yay.

Subscaps

Now one of the major culprits that is extremely hard to get access to would be the Subscap, a nasty muscle that is on the other side of your Scapula. You can’t roll on this one to release the muscles in there so you will be forced to sit down and do some manual therapy. This is once again a big culprit in all kinds of shoulder pain, and this should be your first stop before you even get to work with the ball. After all, if the notion of the work on the ball is to get your scapula moving, we should try and get one of the primary culprits in its immobility to release first. So sit down, get to know your body a bit better and go looking for that tender spot deep in your armpit (essentially).

Scapula Mobility

This second video was released last month and is all about getting mobility back in your scapula, as a lot of the pain we all get in pulling and pressing movements comes from our scapula not moving the way it is supposed to. So following the rule of release and then lengthen we will start off with these fun rehab tools for getting movement back in the scaps. You will need some kind of hard ball (I love using lacrosse balls for this), a stretch band of some kind, and a stick. Take your time in all of the movements, and increase your range of movement slowly, if your shoulders are pretty beat up then this is going to hurt a lot. Breath and relax through the movements, and spend the time that you need to to actually get your mobility back.

Now the last item to look at would be the muscles that are commonly referred to as your rotator cuff muscles. The thing to do here is to simply take the lacrosse ball again, place it on the wall, lean into it, and enjoy the pain. These muscles are going to be tender for sure, and are the last set that I usually attend to. Once all that is finished with, take some time to stretch everything nicely, and then finish off with some contrast showers. This series of work done for a couple days in a row should be able to drastically improve any shoulder pain that you are suffering from overwork. Climbers and acrobats rejoice. You don’t have subacromial bursitis, you have tight muscles from training and climbing a lot. Get them released and see how you feel.